


Three times Aurora Sinistra saw stars

by Jenett



Category: Alternity - A Harry Potter Alternate Universe, Harry Potter Alternity - Fandom
Genre: Gen, Harry Potter - Alternity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-13
Updated: 2015-09-13
Packaged: 2018-04-20 14:49:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4791338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jenett/pseuds/Jenett
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written as background fic for the <a href="http://hpalternity.com">Harry Potter Alternity project</a>, this is about Sinistra's first experiences with the stars.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Three times Aurora Sinistra saw stars

**Author's Note:**

> This fic takes place before the point of divergence, and does not affect other played characters in the project, but is a character study of how the character got that way. (I was Aurora Sinistra's player/author and details of her family interactions may be taken as canonical.)

**July 1968**  
She is almost five when she first discovers the stars.

She is confused a lot that summer. Her Mummy sends her off, her and her sister and her brother and her brother and her sister, all of them to stay with their Uncle Sylvanus. Her oldest sister is older and bossy, all the weight of being the only one grown up enough for school and Sage is still a baby herself, barely talking.

But her mother is pregnant with yet another baby, and she declares that she needs a break from all of them for a bit, all the swarming and talking and asking and wanting things. And so she packs them all up, and sends them off to Uncle Sylvanus and Aunt Tremella, and their house in the woods and the hills and a totally different world than the lakes and valleys and hills of their home.

Auri hates it. It is not like home, and the deep woods scare her, and there's nothing she can make sense of, and it's all too new. And too loud and too bright and too complicated.

It's not that they're unkind. Cousin Lychnis is easy-going and rumpled, in a perpetual state of "I meant to do that". He is nothing like her bossy sister, so clearly age is not the thing that makes people like that. But he is only sometimes around, because he has left school, and he is looking for jobs that will let him play with plants (at least that's how he explains it to her. She finds it baffling, that anyone would want to.)

And Cousin Melantha - she can't get her tongue round that, and it's "Mel!" almost immediately - is the same year as Di, but there's something there, the way that they circle each other and clearly are avoiding spat after spat that makes Auri warier than anything, uncertain whether loyalty to her sister should win, or Mel's obvious patience and good sense. She does not understand, and she doesn't know how to learn.

Her cousin Silenus - well, he's all about romping about and catching frogs and poking at a nest of jarveys, and all the other things boys apparently like to do. And she does not find that appealing, though Storm takes care to invite her along, often enough. But they are all older, he and Or and Sil. And Di spends her time alternately fussing over Sage and - doing something, diligently. She's not sure what.

So Auri's left alone, told she can wander the kitchen garden if she wants, or help her aunt in the kitchen (and she does like that, but there's only so much cooking you can do in a day, even with seven children around the place, and especially if you don't have a wand.) And so she spends a lot of time in a corner of the garden, moving tiny smooth stones to make different patterns.

She can't explain why, just that it entrances her.

They've been there a fortnight, and she's been getting quieter and quieter, and she thinks no one's noticed at all, given all the clamour from everyone else, when one night, at supper, her uncle says "Hey, Auri? Would you come out and help me and Lychnis with something tonight?"

She looks up, from her corner of the table (she is still clumsy enough with her eating that she's down where her left elbow won't constantly be hitting someone else: her family assures her she'll learn eventually. Sometime.) But she nods, because that's what you do. Of course you help.

And after the meal, and after she's helped clear dishes, her uncle holds out his hand to her, and her cousin takes the other, and they walk her up into one of the fields, helping her over the stile. She can smell the hint of sheep, and the growing hay nearby, and the damp rising from the dew, but she can't see much, and she wonders why they don't have a light.

But then they're at the top of the hill, and Lychnis is spreading out an old wool blanket, and saying "Sit down, Auri. And look up?"

And there, laid out above her, is pattern after pattern. There's too many stars, far beyond what she can count to. But they are - as she looks, they stay put (unlike fireflies), and they wait for her to make sense of them. She leans back, then just flops, looking up, and she barely catches her uncle and her cousin smiling across her, before Uncle Sylvanus says "Want us to tell you about them?"

She nods. And he - careful and gentle and slow - begins to tell her. He points out the Great Bear, how it was made to keep a woman safe from harm. Lychnis tells her how it turns through the sky, and how it shows where Polaris is. They tell her about Ariadne, being lost and alone on an island, and how Dionysus came and made her a crown and a home. (And then how the Welsh have a different story, about a different woman, confident and in control, and call it Caer Arianrhod.) She can hear them walking around parts of the stories, the way adults always do when they think you're too young, but she doesn't mind, because they're telling her enough. For now. And then they turn to pointing out animals: hares and wolves and dogs and snakes and even a dragon, then the star their family name comes from.

They clearly stay out later than they'd meant to, but one or the other of them brings her up every night after that. And Lychnis comes home one day with a book, bright and colored. She can't read it (she is only beginning to grasp that the words on the page have their own patterns, and mean things and how you put them all together.) But he reads story after story to her (and her aunt does too, and she talks Di into it, and Or, and Mel and Silenus), repeating the same thing over and over until she's memorised it.

There is nothing like that darkness, and that time where everything else waits, and there is always more to learn, but never pushing at her and prodding and yelling and squabbling. Just her and however much time she needs.

When they finally send her home - three more weeks, now August - it is with instructions to get someone to take her out to watch the Perseids. She wheedles her daddy into it (he is distracted: another baby, more lines around his forehead, from worrying), and he brings her out, and Storm, and a blanket. It is just on the edge of what she can cope with, but her uncle and her cousin explained meteor showers to her, and a bit of where they came from, and why they happen. And once she gets used to it - the flashes of light, and the shift, and trying to see where they go - she learns to enjoy it and try and anticipate when and where the next one will be.

They come out the next night, and the one after that (and she can see the lines in her daddy's head fade a little, and gets more stubborn about wheedling, not just for her own sake.)

And then one or the other of her family brings her up on the hill (for they will not let her go alone) more nights than not, until Di and Or go to school. (And then it is harder, because there's still a new baby, and fewer hands to help.) And so she falls, that winter, into learning to read properly, a different set of patterns and shapes and needs, so that she needs to rely on them less there, at least.

And reading - telling her words, anyway - is something her mummy can do with a baby at her breast, and a task in her hands and only half a brain.

**Summer 1971**  
The summer she is seven, she learns to sneak out of the house.

Mummy has not really recovered from Theo's very difficult birth, and her parents have worked out a way to send her to one of the wizarding holiday camps with Theo and Temp, to bask in the sun and not do any work for a while.

There is something here she does not understand, in those whispered conversations that stop whenever she or her siblings get too near. Something about a little bit of money left by her Granny Prosperpine, Mummy's Mummy. Who's dead now, and Auri understands that that's forever, but she doesn't understand what you do about it. She misses Granny's biscuits, and stories, and helping her wind yarn, and Mum clearly misses her a great deal more (there have been lots of tears, and lots of mugs of tea, and lots of standing in the rose garden 'just to get a breath, dear'.) But wishing won't make it better, will it?

Anyway, apparently there's some money, but Mummy doesn't want to use it for this, but Daddy insists, and Auntie Gera also insists. And while Mummy is very stubborn, she's not more stubborn than both of them put together, and she's very tired (and being stubborn is work). So they pack up her Mummy's things (because even the smallest tasks leave her needing to sit and just breathe for an hour) and they pack up Theo's things and Temp's things, and Auntie Gera takes them all in hand and bustles them off for six weeks. And then Di and Or go through the fireplace to friends - Di to play Quidditch from dawn til dusk, and Or with her.

That leaves Storm and her and Sage as not old enough to do much, but too old to be sent to the camp cheaply, and too young to be left alone, so her Aunt Cordelia and cousin Aurelius come to stay. (Her Uncle Linosyris is travelling for business. Apparently.) They do not want to be there - that much is clear two hours into their visit - but they do not go, either.

She and Storm wonder, briefly, that evening, before they are dragged out to play a game of Exploding Snap (which she hates) whether they could argue that really, they'd be just fine. There's Herdy, the house-elf, who can cook and keep an eye on them, and Storm isn't so young. But when Storm just tries to hint at it, their aunt comes back fierce and hard and sharp, and they drop it.

Auri does not like it. Does not like them invading her home, and making things too clean and too rigid. Does not like Aunt Cordelia disparaging the worn wood of their kitchen table, or her mother's spoons. Does not like Aurelius teasing their mastiff, Verona. Does not like the endless schedules and lists of tasks and no time for any of her own interests. (She is "too young" to have interests, according to her aunt, she is supposed to read what she's told to, and do as she's instructed, and only if she's done all her chores first.) Her aunt attempts to teach her to sew, and to knit and to make lace, and none of these are successful, ending up with her in tears over and over again, and she won't let Auri read what she wants, and she is either entirely alone, or forced to be sociable in all the wrong ways.

Aunt Cordelia is very bossy to her father, too. She hadn't known anyone could be bossier than Di, but inside two days, Aunt Cordelia is shooing the three of them away from him, and insists on making him this meal and that, conspicuously bringing him tea at night, when he's working in his office at home. (And he is working a lot. She does not understand accounting, except that it makes pretty pictures for him, like stars make for her. But this accounting, this summer, it makes him frown a lot, and she doesn't know why.)

Herdy does not like their aunt either. Nor Aurelius. And her aunt and cousin seem to have no idea how you handle a house-elf. Herdy was a present from her mother's side of the family - their father's side hasn't had one in a while - and she's diligent and careful and good at a lot of stuff, but there are things you can't hint at, or she'll be punishing herself forever. Apparently this is a house-elf thing, but Auri doesn't know that for sure. One point is not a line, as her daddy says.

There is no one to take her out to the stars. Aurelius laughs, when she tries to ask, and his mother mocks her interest. And Storm's got his own troubles (having to do a great deal more with Aurelius than she does, because they're sharing a room). And she can't get to Daddy to ask properly, and besides, he's clearly very busy and very worried and maybe stars wouldn't be the thing that would help.

Stars would help her, will help her, she's sure. But she recognises she is not the one anyone's thinking about in this house.

And so, two weeks in, when the moon's just started half full, she decides that if she's going to see stars, she's going to have to make it happen on her own. She thinks about it, hard and long, lying awake several nights, the only time she gets on her own besides her baths, and she comes up with a plan. And the first clear night, the first night without mist and fog and clouds all over the place, she tries.

She gathers up a pair of shoes she'd set by her dresser, and an old cloak, and she eases her way to the door. She's thought to ask Herdy to oil the hinges, and it opens smoothly and gently. And then she's tiptoeing out, listening to the even snores of her aunt in the guest room across the hall. And then she's at the head of the stairs. Sage's door is closed, and she praises the builders of their little farmhouse that the floors are solid oak, weathered and aged and with barely a creak, and the stairs themselves are stone. (For up until the stairs, she could just be going to the bathroom, really. Nothing to see here. Nothing to hear.)

She moves step by step, careful and feeling her way, down and down and down, and then out the kitchen door (and she'd gotten Herdy to oil that too.) Easing it open gently, leaving it just slightly ajar behind her. And she then stands in the garden, and tries to figure out the way to go. She's done this, up to the hill, countless times in the daytime, but suddenly, she's scared, and it's entirely new to be out here alone.

And she knows there's nothing that dangerous near them. But she hears noises she's not used to, and rustling, and she gets turned around, and she doesn't know where the path goes.

She takes a few steps, but then she's shivering, and she sits down on the stone, on a bit of cold uneven rock, and just has to hug her knees and wait until she can feel her way back to the doorway, and edge her way back in, and back up the stairs, just as careful as when she went out.

It will not do.

The next morning, she gets up, and she does her chores without complaint, and when her Aunt asks her what she plans to do to occupy her time, she says "Someone should tend to Mummy's rosebushes. I don't know everything about them, but I know a bit? Can I go look and see?"

And her Aunt waves a hand - being much taken up with a disagreement between Storm and Aurelius. (Involving a snake of some kind. Or a field mouse. Or maybe both.) And she goes to the garden, and she stands there, with her eyes closed, and she breathes them in and breathes them out, and begins, slowly, like star after star appearing in the sky, to learn each bush from the other, and each place it has a branch.

That task absorbs her for days on end. It is not stars, and she still - if she looks at them, they're all yellow and pink and white and red and bushy and thorny, and really, what else do you say about roses? But she can smell them, and they smell different. The lushness of this one here, the sweetness of that one, the way that one has a smell that's like her mummy baking Christmas treats, only not. The way that one is like summer rolled into a single breath, hot and damp and breathtaking, how this one has a moment where it's like honey from the hives in the corner of the orchard.

And then she does the same thing with the herb garden, though that's easier, because the smells are sharper and more clearly defined. This one's lavender, and that one's verbena, and that one's chives, and this one's rosemary, and so on and on and on. She works until she can close her eyes anywhere in the garden, and know - from breathing it in that day - exactly where she is. And she tests herself, over and over again, for hours at a time, making it look like she's playing some internal game, or looking for bugs or harvesting. (All of which she does too. Might as well be practical.)

Just to be complete, she learns the other smells. The pears and the apples. The summer flowers on the front of the house, the hollyhocks and morning glories and lilacs and all the other smells that mix and mingle. Her aunt - well, apparently gardens are a thing that good little girls should take an interest in, because her Aunt leaves her alone, surprisingly, for much of each afternoon.

And so, a fortnight later, when the moon is waning, now, she tries again. Foot after foot, to the door, and then slipping on her shoes, and the path. And this time, it's flawless. She has to make a few adjustments - the wind's from a different direction, in the nighttime, but once she realises that, it's easy. And she finds herself at the stone wall at the edge of their garden, and then slipping through, the clear path to the top of the hill, with just enough light she can walk easily, and she counts the steps as she goes, where the path turns.

She spreads her cloak, and she lies down, and she looks up, and she loses herself in the patterns she loves best.

The next day, her aunt pokes and prods her, seeing in her that puzzling quiet and certainty, but she is unshakeable. She did a thing, by herself, and it worked. And there were stars, and they are hers, and the dark and the hills and the rustles in the grass will not keep her away. The stars will always be hers. She will not let them be anything else.

She loses sleep (but makes it up on the cloudy nights) and three weeks later, her Mummy comes back. She looks better - there is pink in her cheeks again, and she's smiling, and she doesn't need to sit down so often, and Theo is less about the crying and more adorable, and Auntie Gera and Daddy both look a lot less alarmed. (Well, Daddy is still worried. She thinks it might be a permanent thing now.)

But they still don't have much time for her, and even less after Auntie Gera and Aunt Cordelia and Aurelius all go home, so Auri stays out of the way, and out of the way, and goes to her stars herself. For another few days, even after Di and Or come back, until one night she is coming back with her eyes up - because she does not need to look at the ground, not the way she's trained herself. And the wind's going away from her, so it's not until she's almost on top of her Daddy that she smells the smoke of his pipe and it throws her off, and she ends up tripping and sitting down suddenly, on the stone path, with a soft "Ooof."

He has been sitting on the stoop of the kitchen door, the one broad step before it opens up to the garden, but he immediately stands up, and picks her up one-armed, and brings her inside to his office. He settles in the comfy chair in his office (the one they are never ever allowed to sit in unless he says), and Herdy is bringing a tray, and he is shifting so she has to look at him (or look down and away).

And she is very puzzled, because he hasn't said a word to her. But when Herdy's done fiddling with the tray, he says "Where've you been, poppet?"

She thinks, before answering. Both because she's not sure what to say - and because this is her daddy, and she's fairly sure lying to him wouldn't work even if she wanted to, and she doesn't want. So finally, she says. "There were stars."

He's trying not to laugh, she thinks, but he feeds the aborted expression into another puff on his pipe, and he says ""Where were you looking at them?"

She doesn't dissemble. "On the hill, above the orchard. I took the path, I didn't go anywhere else. Just up and back."

He tilts his head. "And why did you go alone?"

He is asking her questions she can't begin to answer. How can she lay out the past weeks for him, if he doesn't already know it? How can she explain how she needed to see the stars, needed to see the certain things, the predictable things, the things she understood, to cope with all the things she didn't? How can she say that he didn't have time for her, and Storm didn't have time for her, and Mummy certainly didn't have time for her? She doesn't blame them, but she knows they'd hear it as hurt, and it's just truth.

Some of that, maybe, is something he does see, because he stops, and says. "No, wait. Let me tell you that Herdy's been watching you, night after night, and following you, enough to make sure you didn't come to harm. Every night you've been up. Only she wouldn't tell your Aunt about it, and I didn't think to ask her, and it wasn't until tonight that it came out, when you'd already gone."

Her eyes flick to Herdy, who is looking simultaneously like the best house-elf ever, and the one most deserving of punishment. Which, really, is pretty much how Auri feels, so she has sympathy.

And then her daddy's saying "It's been a hard summer for you, pet, hasn't it? And this helped?" He's asking, but she knows he isn't really. That he does know.

She just nods.

"So. I ought to be very angry with you. You scared me a great deal, realising you'd been gone. You're still very young, poppet. You are very stubborn and very smart and very resourceful, but you are also very small - and anyone can slip and fall and get hurt, especially in the dark. And it is my job, as your daddy, to keep you safe."

That's fair enough, and she knows it. She suspects there's going to be punishment here, and she just hopes it won't be too bad. That there will still be stars.

He then bends and kisses her forehead. "I want to talk to your mother, before we decide what to do. Go to bed, promise me you'll stay there tonight, and we'll talk tomorrow. Later today. Promise?"

She nods. "Promise." And then he leads her back upstairs, and watches from the door as she crawls into bed.

The next morning, after everyone's up and fed and her siblings have been chivvied out the door to play on the hills (with Di and Or very much in charge), she is kept back, and brought up to the big bedroom. Her Mummy is stretched out on the chaise, and her Daddy has put a little footstool for her to sit on, and he sits on the little couch.

It's not like she thought. Mummy starts by apologising to her. It takes her completely aback, she had no idea. But her Mummy says, clear and straight and without any hesitation at all "We did badly by you, and I'm sorry. We're both sorry. We left you alone and we didn't check to see how you were doing, and we should have known better."

It doesn't make it right, but it makes the hole in her - the one where she just feels invisible in the midst of the noise - ease up.

She nods, and then says, cautiously, "Mum." (And it's the first time she's used that, and not Mummy, and she knows they both realise.) "I couldn't ask. Not and make things worse."

There's a flash, then, between her parents, where her father says "She is so definitely your daughter, love." and her mother laughs, an honest laugh like none of them have heard from her in months and months. Laughing and nodding and then laughing again, fit to wake Theo sleeping in his crib in the tiny nursery.

And then her Mum's asking what would help. They talk, and they treat her with respect. They tell her what things they won't allow (her going up entirely by herself, or without letting someone know). They tell her what things they wish they could do, but can't promise and keep (having one of them go). They talk through whether Di or Or might go (she'd rather not, they'd be fussing to come back down after ten minutes), whether Storm is old enough (they think not.)

And she's starting to think there isn't an answer, when her Mum says "Do you have any thoughts?"

There's the one that pops in her head. "Could Herdy? I mean, could I tell Herdy? Or she could check on me?"

Her parents roll that around, there's one of those quick exchanges of glances and half a word here, a phrase there, where they're talking over her head in ways she will never ever understand, not until she dies. But they nod, after a minute. "If you promise to tell Herdy any day you plan to go, and agree she can check on you, and if she agrees, then you can. And you - well, you can't see the stars when it's cloudy, but you don't go if it's raining, or misty, or cloudy, or if it's been raining so much it's slippery. And we'll talk about snow and ice and cold when we get to the winter."

She can agree to that, and she does, and three minutes later, they're explaining to Herdy, who cheerfully agrees. (Apparently, it is the perfect punishment, in her mind, for not telling Master and Mistress sooner.)

When they're wrapping up, and Mum is telling her stories about the holiday camp, there's a place where she stops, and says "You feel older than you did, don't you?"

And Auri nods, sure it's right, but not sure what to do about it. "Yes, Mum."

Her siblings don't know what to make of it, when they come back and it's Dad and Mum and more smiles than there should be. She tries to explain it to Storm, later, stretched out while they're reading in the orchard, but the words come out all tangled, except for "There will be stars. It's all right."

**September 19, 1972**  
The fall she turns nine, they give her a telescope. Di is gone to school, and Or, and this year, Storm is gone too. So it's just her and Sage and Temp and Theo.

The afternoon of her birthday, her parents pull her into their bedroom, and they say "We have something extra special for you, and we know you'll treat it well. We've talked and talked over whether to give you this."

And they pull out a case, from under the sofa, and it's long and narrow and not nearly so deep, more square tube than rectangle. And she wonders, and doesn't begin to hope, until Dad is undoing the clasps and opening it. It is - and it's new, she can see that - a telescope of her very own. She has looked up and looked up, every night that she's been allowed to, since that deal a year ago.

(And she has learned to hide the 'good sleep' charms various relatives give her under Di's bed, balanced on the ledge of the mattress frame, so they can't be found, so Di sleeps soundly through her sneaking out. She has never ever not once tried to break her agreement with her parents, but Di will not believe she has permission. Or ought to. And hiding the charm is easier than endless arguments.)

But she had thought she wouldn't get a telescope until she started school. Had braced herself against it, against not being able to see what she's starting to read about, as she moves beyond the constellations, and into the stars that make them up. She'd resigned herself to not being able to see galaxies, or comets, or any number of other things.

They wait, as she runs her fingers along it, and then takes each piece out. When she finally looks up, they're both grinning. She can see the worry lines on her father's face, and she knows this was more money than they probably ought to have spent, and yet, she can't possibly say no.

"There's a few books, too." her father adds, and she stands, moving to hug him, and kiss his cheek and say "Thank you, Dad." in his ear, before she does the same thing to her mother. And that night, they let her have alone with her telescope, but the next, her Mum asks to come out and see, and the one after that, her Dad, and she has begun to learn how to find the interesting things. (Just begun: one of the books is about aiming the thing, and focusing it.)

And when Or comes back from school, and Storm, they come up and they help show her, standing in the cold (with one of their parents to do a warming charm) and begin to show her some of what they've learned in class.

She can't wait until she can do what they do, on the top of the astronomy tower, with someone to answer all of her questions, each and every one of them.


End file.
